Slashdot Mirror
Law Requires Italian Web Cafes to Record ID
Armadni General writes "CNN is reporting that a new Italian law requires that all businesses offering public internet access, such as web cafes, to identify and record all customers. While supporters of this law trumpet its anti-terrorism potential, still others see no such advantage and bemoan this invasion of personal privacy. 'They must be able, if necessary, to track the sites visited by their clients. [...] Contents of people's e-mail is, however, supposed to remain private and can only be made available to law enforcement through a court order. Italy also obliges telecommunications companies to keep traffic data and European ministers agreed last week to require the carriers to retain records of calls and e-mails for a maximum of two years. The European Parliament's two largest groups endorsed the data retention initiative on Wednesday despite complaints from privacy advocates and telecoms, and the full body is expected to adopt a bill next week.'"
It's just bad to to have to submit to this law... /. is the very bottm... :(
But having to read it on
Grammar Zealots: please spare a non-english writer (lastknight dot com)
Three cheers for fake ID!
POKE 36879,8
Luckily I am well-versed in the ancient art of JAPing over Tor, and I have studied the lost techniques of Knoppix burning.
Global warming is a cube.
If the cops really think that ID should be required, why aren't they stepping up and doing something more effective, such as a computer login or swipecard?
Good luck securing all the open wireless access points by law enforcement.
But probably the ones with open WLANs wil be 'guilty' of anything accused. Someone simply *has* to go to jail!
Perhaps one or two virus authors could have been caught. Maybe, and then probably not. But today, with all those open wireless networks, the law is pointless. It only affects the poorest people, those who need email, or are trying to find a job online, but don't have a computer at home.
First off, I realy think the proposal of the EU minister would have /. article on its own.
merrited a
It's such a broad assault on the privacy of European citizens that I
don't think there is anything comparable in European history, yet, for
most people who only follow the mainstream press, it's an absolute
non-story. There is close to no coverage at all.
To spell it out again, information about all your telephone calls (that
is, for example, who you called and when), all your email (that is whom
did you write to and when) and all the websites you visited will be
recorded and stored for at least 6 months and up to 24 months.
As to who will be able to use this information, this is of course left
very vague and surprise, surprise, the music industry is already
lobbying to have access to this data.
Really, this proposal that will probably make it through the parliament
will change Europe in a very, very worrying way and nobody seems to be
upset about it. It's frustrating and scary.
P.S.:
I just read on spiegel online (a german news site), that the Italian law
leads to a lot of web cafes closing their door, because customers are
not willing to take this bs.
Why not just simply implant a chip in the neck of every Italian so they can track their every movement? Think of the anti-terror potential on that one. Suspicious patterns of movement could cause a paralysis of the muscular system and alert the police which could investigate and "reboot" the subject. Wow! What an idea. I should try to sell it to the dep of Homeland Security - then again they're probably aware already... they're just wondering how to sell the idea to the public.
Alas ! That the same thing was voted in France a couple weeks ago...
Bah, our Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, is best buds with the Bush administration, so what can a guy do ? :-(
I remember a few years back in the dial-up days trying to get net access in Italy, it took a whole lot of documents and bureaucracy, we had to get a friend who was a real resident to put it under his name. I don't think you can do anything in that country without atleast having some kind of passport or ID photocopied and stamped.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Link to the actual proposal scheduled for final approval on december 143 2
http://www.europarl.eu.int/oeil/file.jsp?id=52750
Whenever I'm connected via wlan, I use openvpn tunnel for any transferred data.
Do they really expect to be able to automatically capture everything, or are the cafe wlans offering internet access only through their proxy server?
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
We let others go first and then we repeat their mistakes. Let the flogging begin. We deserve it.
That's kind of self-limiting: if you leave you wireless network unprotected and people use it for doing something illegal, you are likely going to be in trouble in some form. First, the presumption will be that you are the criminal. Even if you can prove that it wasn't you, you may still be help responsible for your lack of security. And I doubt this is going to be any different in the US or Italy; it's only that in Italy, this sort of thing requires a law, while in the US, it can be introduced through case law.
This is a major blow to the average user's privacy, while anyone with evil intentions and motivation is going to laugh and get a fake ID. Take it for granted that ID checking mechanisms will be more than weak in most places.
Well it may come to that. When on vacation in Spain and Austria I noticed a variety of billing methods for net labs. The most common was 'quisiera usar Internet' - 'bien, usa ordenador numero ocho'. and settle payment when you left. (Sorry if my Spanish is wrong!) Some did make you pay upfront for half hour blocks with a temporary login and password. (Printed out on a POS docket). Others were timed with a coin slot.
That was mainly net access in pay by the hour computer labs. Whilst there wasn't any ID check it's not too far removed.
For actual cafes, whose main revenue is food and drink the following scenario might apply: Some multinational coffee chains already have membership swipe cards that allow for rewards such as a free coffee after every umpteenth purchase. Every time you buy coffee and a muffin you might get, say, 15 mins free net access -forcing you to go back for more food to extend your time. Premium members might pay for credits in advance. Beats sticking a coin in a slot every 10 minutes.
The telcos have to store email for a year?
That is amazing. Thank God for public key/private key encryption like that implemented by PGP. Then the telcos can store encrypted goo that's very tough to crack. Does the Italian law cover that?
It seems to have an out of proportion effect on our lives for the damage it currently causes. This is not to belittle the victims, but we are letting something that has miniscule effect on the populace as a whole CONTROL US.
Or at least let the politicians control us through FUD. Any politician that utters the word "terrorism" along with a bill that they think "needs" to get passed to "protect" us should be voted out ASAP anyway.
But imagine if nations like the US spent their kind of anti-terrorism money on, something basic, like national healthcare. Would that have saved or benefited more lives than "fighting the war on terrorism?"
Blaaargh! These damned Americans and their Big Brother.... oh.
First, the "Big Brother" directive being forced through the EU which mandates logging of all end-points used in communications.
Second, the elimination of anonymous access, via cybercafes and pre-paid phone cards. This closes the present loopholes in the implementation of Big Brother.
Third, the creation of EU-wide databases that are accessible to police forces before criminal acts occur. Yes, this data will be abused, sold, stolen, leaked. It always happens.
Forth, the creation of new types of "crime". See the French proposal to outlaw free software, proposals to criminalise patent infringement, etc.
Fifth, the creation of EU juduicial and police structures to enforce these crimes. See EPO tribunals, EU arrest warrant, extradition for crimes like "piracy", etc.
Interesting to note that all references to "terrorism" were removed from the compromise ammendments that will be voted on Wednesday. This wave of anti-privacy legislation has nothing to do with terrorism (that was just the stick) and everything to do with autocrats in business and in government that feel they have lost control of new technology and will do anything to regain it.
The real targets of these laws are downloaders, tax evaders, petty and less petty crooks... it'd be justified if the EU was sinking in a sea of crime, but since crime rates have been falling year on year...
Europe's privacy advocates are rightly worried. It is the sheer speed of the assault (all happening in a few months) that has left most of us staggered. No time to lobby, no time to mount a resistance, almost no time even for journalists to notice what's happening.
Lastly, and most worryingly for EU citizens, is the way criminal law and new definitions of crime are being created by the unelected Council and Commission burocracy - these groups have basically coerced the European Parliament into accepting "compromises" or being left out of the legislative process completely.
In other words... we cannot vote these laws away. There is no mechanism for appeal. There is no supreme court. There is no constitution. When French and Dutch voters threw out the consitution, they threw out a last chance for European democracy. If only they had known...
My blog
It's about data mining, it's about control... they want to be able to have access to unlimited information at our expense. Right now governments are pushing their authority as far as they can, just to see how far they CAN go. And apparently they can do whatever the fsck they want.
As a Frenchman, I had wished that Europe in general would remain a beacon of personal freedom while the U.S. ate away its people's freedom in the name of "freedom" (Patriot Act, anyone?). But unfortunately the reality of things is quite different.
The more I see of this creeping fascism the more I realise that technology has got some people VERY frightened.
Enabling technology is exploding exponentially on a global scale. For example a friend of mine just came back from VSO in Africa where they are rolling out net technology at an alarming rate, no constraints, no restrictions, no government oversight. It's the last frontier, there's still always somewhere to run and take your economic power with you. When utterly impractical, unenforceable, stifling measures are being taken it's a sign of desperation. And it raises the not so obvious question, who really benefits? Since we all know the terrorist threat is bogus (come on snap out of that denial) one has to wonder exactly what the frightened people are tring to protect. With companies like Sony their desperation is clearly to protect their existing broken business. But what about this ID nonsense? Can it be that there is an "ID industry" that has any potential for profit? I doubt it. So who is holding governments hostage with fear? We always knew that technology would be a 'leveller', but I guess we missed the real reason why this would be. It isn't that developing countries would catch up, but rather that our own developed world would sink and suffocate under the red tape neccessary for the status quo to retain their corrupt power.
This is not related to internet cafes only.
Last week I went to a shopping center and I saw that they turned off their free Wireless Lan and Public Computers. With a message telling that this was due to new law restriction.
The day after I went as often to my university mathematical library to access the Internet and -- guess what -- they asked me to fill some form and bring them some copy of my documents to be able to get an access to it.
Everyone that is giving public access without asking for documents AND keeping track of the time someone accessed the network AND the IP he/she was used is breaking the law.
Luckily, anyways, my university's professor-only wireless lan is still using dumb mac filtered protection.
Ah, don't forget. This is for protecting us from terrorism.
...postboxes require valid ID before people can send snail mail? Does the postal service have a requirement to track who is communicating with whom with their service too? Or is this just "new technology my feeble mind can't comprehend, so it must be dangerous!" thinking?
Don't know about you folks, but to enter the library in C.U.N.Y. you had to show valid ID. That part of the "law" does not really worry me, since good terrorists will have fake Id in any case it won't hamper their activities that way. Those in country illegally for non-terror activities will be severly hampered, but that is another issue entirely. The real story is tracking your electronic communication. We know that if done right, this con help track those that are using the internet for subversive intententions such as for kidnapping, bombings and... distribution of music files :)
At some level the ability to be able to track such activity and use it by linking it with to people that were in the internet cafe at the time is quite desirable, especially after part of your neighbourhood gets destroyed and it comes to light that those responsible used various internet technologies in public places to plan, fund and implement it. However, its going to be a lot of information to be stored and looked over to find patterns of information, etc. Who is going to do that? A beaucracy who has problems gettingout from under its own feet, or a privately contracted firm (with individuals who have interests in sharing such information secretly with others)?
This is a mess logistically, and they should know it. It sounds good at one level, but how many petabytes of info are going to be generated and scanned? They might as well just use Carnivore or whatever the USA uses and be done with it... as if it will really help before an attack, or to catch the person who really came up with the idea of the attack... or the bankers or "charitable organisations" from whom the funds came.
For every present, there is a past
Sadly, people have to bend more and more over for their EU governments. Storing all tele/datacommunications from everyone the last two years? I would buy stocks in the storage companies now :)
This deal about cybercafes show that the governments really fear anonymity.. I guess I will have to use Tor whenever I go to such places from now on.
Dvorak on Doomtech
This law has been around for at least one year, possibly more.
It got passed after a terrorist group who killed two Italian senior civil servants (Marco Biagi in 2002 and Massimo d'Antona in 1999) used an internet cafe at the Rome main train station to send messages to Italian newspapers claiming responsibility for the assassinations.
Generally, this law was ignored, partly because the terrorists mentioned above (the last survivors of the Red Brigades, a major communist group thoroughly defeated during the eighties) were quickly rounded up and arrested.
But when it turned out that the Islamic terrorists responsible for the 2004 Atocha Station bombing in Spain (over 200 dead) also used internet cafe's to co-ordinate their actions, policemen started to go round internet cafe's threatening them with closure and prosecution if they did not keep records of the people visiting them.
Needless to say, this law is completely useless. If you want to preserve your anonimity when in Italy, go to the smaller places. Most do not bother checking your ID card and have no CCTV, contrary to the big places (which are usually run by Telecom Italia). But make sure you have a Knoppix bootdisc because very few use any antivirus and their PC are full of malware.
Sadly, my country is not famous for its respect of civil liberties. The state and the police often abuse their power and do not miss the opportunity offered by someone abusing the system to further extend their powers to intrude into people's privacy.
And instead of protesting and ask for a more just society, people take the easy route and try to get around the law whenever possible. It's all screwed up.
what is stop a terrorist from spamming their secret messages making it impossible
to determine who is the real recipient.
Whatever law they pass the bad guys will find a way around it.
This is about controlling and harrassing honest citizens and infringing on their basic rights to privacy.
Vote no to big bro!
From the article: "Internet cafes also must make and keep a photocopy of the ID." I don't know about Italy, but here in Spain, the main teleco company Telefonica doesn't require any ID photocopy when signing up for a new phone line with ADSL service - they just want the ID number, and as the whole process can be done over the phone, I don't think there's any sort of verification. Why should I give an ID photocopy to a lousy cafe?
On the other hand, also from the article: "European ministers agreed last week to require the carriers to retain records of calls and e-mails for a maximum of two years." How exactly are they going to do this? I can see logging being done on the ISPs SMTP servers, but how are the carries going to log e-mails sent my personal SMTP server? Logging all packets with destination port 25? And what about webmail? How are they going to log that?
"a maximum of two years" and a minimum of what?
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
You'll never know when you need to defend yourself and your family. I don't give a damn if who I email gets recorded for 2 years but if we let it get to double plus good then I'm going to shoot someone who had a hand in it and be labeled a terrorist. At least in the US, guns are so widespread and accessible that it would take decades to remove the single bullet retribution.
And I'm not an extremist, I just remember my history classes from school - the writing was on the wall and the smart Jewish people left Germany before WW2 but now there are fewer places to go that aren't hellholes so that changes the logical thing to do from 'retreat' to 'fight'.
Ok, maybe I'm overreacting but if you judge someone only by their actions then politicians lately seem to fall into the evil category. They're blithly walking down the slippery path because 'it's what people want' not taking a stand for what is moral and good.
Shh.
Government might not be interested in those who lawfully use the internet. I suspect what government is trying to do is frustrate the terrorists/bad guys by taking away one more place they can do buisness. You know the bad detective movie sayings "Lets shake the branches and see what falls out of the tree". Or Tzu "If your enemy is angry, irritate them". What they are trying to do is make the enemy snap, and make a bad choice based on emotion rather than logic.
I would not be surprised if government had open wi-fi honeypots, places these terrorists felt more safe because of the percieved anonymity. Think of government making their own alleys, with no lighting, that is inviting to a mugger. But in reality, it's a trap!
But probably the ones with open WLANs wil be 'guilty' of anything accused. Someone simply *has* to go to jail!
And I can see which way this will go... after the ones with the deepest pockets. Government will probably not go after individuals for having open wi-fi spots. Government will go after manufacturers. Expect some kind of DRM to be added to wi-fi or any PC that connects to the internet. Now that i'm thinking about it, didn't Intel add some kinds of unique Id on every P4 chip it sells? It is more difficult to spoof than a MAC on a NIC.
I suspect terrorists don't even bother with the internet. Who knows, maybe they place ad's in newspapers. Cell 1 tells Cell 2, if you see "Charming 2 bedroom 1.5 Bath on upper west side with view of Allah", that means to set off your bombs. For all you know the ad could be "Ugly dog for sale. $30,000. He stinks too" or "Sally, we met at the cafe, please call Arby".
For terrorism to work, there needs to be enough of them motivated. And so far in the USA, there have not been any since 9/11. Some might argue those in 9/11 are as isolated as Timothy McVeigh or the Columbine shootings, that it was one group and a one time deal.
Now, can government do something usefull and ban mail in rebates please?
After recording your information you get a plastic card (the chain of cafes in question is Internet Train). With this card I can surf away at any Internet Train in Italy. And how exactly does that thwart terrorism?
For starters: I didn't try to read the magnetic stripe, which can be done with any 30$card reader, but I can't imagine that it's very hard to make sense of it and alter it appropriately. But I wouldn't even have to be technically savvy. I could just pay a junkie 20 Euros that he obtains such a card. The card can be lost or stolen and how exactly do you monitor such a vast amount of data?
Italy is turning into a nation of fucking Fascists under Berlusconi and it ain't a pleasent sight.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Everybody's going off the rails and ranting about privacy, liberals, data collection, compromising rights, etc...
Think about this for a second. So you want to go into a private business, rent computer time and an internet connection, conduct whatever behavior you want on their systems and then leave, totally anonymously, with no accountability for what you did on their systems?
By the way, you are next of kin to the late Senator Mubumbo, and as your lawyer, I need your help transferring his estate of $127 Million into your bank account.
Sadly, in the UK, we have a nice little law (with lots of nice little holes in it) that basically says "give us your password. And your private key. And any session keys you may have used. What, you don't have that information any more? OK, see you in two years when you get out of jail". Fun.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
I can see Congress passing a law to where you must present ID that conforms to the coming Real ID Act of 2005 before connecting to the Internet at a public conveyance. No more anonymous connections here in the USA such as going into libraries or places that offer free Internet.
Are they going to start taking ID if you go read a book while IN the library? I realize if you check it out they need to know who you are, in case you dont bring it back. But asking for ID up front is not right.( i have heard of a case where they went back and looked for fingerprints in a book that was not checked out by the person on trial, and used that as evidence of intent )
Between taking ID, datamining on purchases, and cameras everywhere you look, the honest citizen has lost most of his right to privacy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
When I was backpacking through Italy this summer I was suprised to find the aformentioned policies (or parts of them) in place and in use in every internet cafe I stopped in. They always checked my ID and some even asked me to see my passport. Now, it wasnt the most pleasant feeling when somebody asked you to get your passport out to check your email.. but I always got the same reply: "I know, sorry... New regulations.."
I guess the data retention aspect of this law would be new, but otherwise much of it is already in place!
Lets see, now you are a web cafe in Palermo or Syracuse in Sicily and your cafe is
frequented by the Corleonesi (mafia) as a supposedly private place to 'do business. Now suppose that web cafe owner is going to enforce this Italian law against his customers. How long will he live? And the Carabineiri in the local area, you know, the ones that have been corrupted for many decades and have lived through Mussolini, Berlusconi, and all the others and yet soldier on for their capos....what are they going to do about it?
This is going to be one of the most pencil whipped laws ever passed. It will never be enforced. Its passage, you can be assured, was only under external pressure and for internal 'photo ops'. Any prosecutor or law inforcement officers who try to enforce it will have a target on their backs for life, as will their homes and offices. To even think about something like this in the home of the mafia is more than ludicrous.
This sort of thing will kill the internet as we know it, and make it into another phone carrier style of network.
One year ago, I was on a holiday in Rimini. I needed to book a flight so I went to an Internet cafe. My ID was required and I gave it very reluctantly.
You won't believe this but the registers to record the ID entries were very available. The date of printing -which I don't remember in detail- was from the Mussolini period and had the book all thinkable relevant columns.
You'd think, Mussolini did foresee the Internet. WRONG! The fascist bastard was a fscking control freak. In that era, communicating and traveling was very suspicious activity. More or less, just like it is today.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Thats why i refuse to 'buy' electronic copies of books/magazines, and suggest to all i know to do the same.
Will handfull of us stop the trend? No, but at least we did our part.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They can keep as many records of me logging in/out as they want. But it is nothing to worry about.
First of all, they would have to know that it is actually me sitting on the computer. I never register with any real data, anyway.
Secondly, they would have to crack the encryption I am using. Using 256-bit encryption, there is no way that they can break in and see what I am actually transmitting/receiving. Even if they use a key logger, there are ways to deliver a message.
Thirdly, I have nothing to hide. Even if they go through all my words, the most they can find is things that have to do with my personal interests.
Terrorists are not silly to use public Web Cafes to do their work. They would rather use P2P apps to exchange messages in the form of computer files disguised as media content. Packets could go around the world before reaching their destinations, and they could be downloaded from different sites. Good luck to any agency finding that out.
Oh? Do you know how easy it is to make fake ID and how much easier is to just steal it? Jeans, sweatshirt, rucksack, the right "look"... how would you tell them apart from any other tourist?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
... I have studied the lost techniques of Knoppix burning.
Your knoppix-fu is easily defeated by their BIOS-fu, Configuring a public system to *only* boot from the hard drive is necessary to prevent bypassing anti-virus software and installing malware. Your fu is only useful against weaklings who fail to update BIOS settings.
Normally, it's kind of useless to complain about "I submitted it first", but... this was months ago. I don't think sites like reddit are perfect, but I notice that I get a lot of the same items faster than on slashdot.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
will be subverted, in time and to varying degrees. The Internet is no exception.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
These days there's no need to boot off a thumb drive to run Linux off it. Many distros come with QEmu and all you do is run a batch or script file to launch the emulator and a full Linux session in either Windows or Linux. Note: the machine would have to be x86. For an example check out http://damnsmalllinux.org/
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Policy laundering in Europe
Policy laundering in general, and the push for global ID by the Bush administration
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Everyone knows that terrorists LOVE Internet Cafes...
Download free e-books, lectures, and tutorials at bookgoldmine.com
For those that don't speak italian - http://italian.about.com/library/slang/blslangdict ionaryindexp.htm
How is this any different than sending mail anonymously through the post office. Should we require all letter mail to be registered and eliminate mail boxes?
Now excuse me, I'll be installing Tor.
?SYNTAX ERROR
To get to the host OS you've had to go through whatever the standard login validation is. The host OS may still be doing keylogging, you are not totally secure *iff* someone is going through extaordinarty measure to monitor that cafe's systems.
On second thought, that's not really useful on Windows, is it?
This sig no verb.
The Open Rights Grou have been tracking this legislation, and have details on how to lobby your Meps
Do join us in fighting this.
the internet cafes are almost all gone.
Basically, compliance is enough of a burden that the small businesses who had internet access have decided to just get rid of it instead. I personally saw at least a dozen places that still had signs with "internet cafe" listed but no computers. And all of them had removed the machines within the last year.
Hooray for unintended consequences!
Sorry, governments, but my identity is in another castle!
They can choose now: fight terrorism/continue Italian tradition to eat their daily sausage, or the terrorists have won/smelly Frenchmen eating the boogers as they fly in the wind.
Me, I choose to C) follow the lead of that one guy that puts his ID in a sealed postal box addressed to himself and then says that if someone wants his ID then he'll sue them for mail fraud to break the seal on the postal box. Not a shabby IDea, by the wayside.
Strange how people would welcome the law if it applied in South Africa but villify it when it applies to their own home...
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
No minimum? So just retain the data for 1 nanosecond...
Oh well, what the hell...
Yes, to defend your PRECIOUS FREEDOM we'll install this handy dandy chip (made in china due to manufacturing and budgetary issues) that'll protect you and THE CHILDREN from all those DEADLY TERRORIST PAEDOPHILES!.
Yay! America is saved!
Pff terrorist just use unsecure wireless access points.
RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
In fact, Mr. Bruce Schneier has a blog posting about this subject from October already: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/pass port_requir.html
Yah, this'll work...
Why should you be able to threaten someone anonymously from a public place 1000 miles away when you can't do it from 10 feet away in the same place?
i am SHOCKED to see Italy of all countries tending towards fascism that is so out of character.
/will the packets run on time?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It won't be long until a version of this law comes to America.
In order to log onto the internet, you'll have to swipe your government mandated ID card (See "The Real ID Act"), and your browsing history will be stored on the microchip in your card and then transmitted to the national database whenever it is synched up at the airport, the DMV, or whatever.
This shit has to stop.
and had to read it on ./ aweful!!!!
Most online scams and email scams are ran from these places, and the owners know it. The fact that someone does not want to show ID for using the internet at a cafe simply says they are probably doing something wrong there. Now if they would only enforce this in Nigeria... I wish :(